Give the Devil His Due
by Rahmi
Summary: Sam continues to deal with his demons as the boys attempt to work a case. Sequel to Devil's in the Details.
1. Give the Devil His Due

__

The sequel to Devil's in the Details. There'll be another chapter added to this tomorrow, but it's more of a timestamp for the 'verse than it is a sequel. There's threatened suicide in here, and the usual swearing, along with the mentioned death of a child.

The weirdest thing about it all (aside from the fact that it was all friggin' weird and brain breaking and that his little brother has demons, thanks for asking) is the fact that Sam's demons like to... cuddle. They'll pull into a motel and some kind of mangy ass mongrel will be in front of their door, tongue lolling and eyes a soul-sucking black.

Sam'll let it in when he's not looking, the bitch; they've been kicked out of a motel three times for killing a random animal in the parking lot, so Dean figures it's one of those things he just has to roll with. He knows the demons are pretty much always there anyway because Sam's got a tendency to stare into the space two feet to his immediate left and hiss out "shut up," "stop it," or "don't you dare," all the freakin' time.

His brother's been mistaken for crazy at least twelve times that Dean's counted, which amuses the hell out of him.

It just takes a little getting used to.

Anyway, it's the cuddling he really can't stand. The things are nasty as fuck and that's not even counting the demons inside them. Most of them are the old skinny things that like to hang around for scraps and once or twice they'd been full of scabbing wounds and sores. Sam doesn't seem to care much one way or the other; he pulls back his covers and the demon climbs in with him, curled up at his back or at his feet, or, once, in his hair.

He'd nicked a few vials of rabies vaccines from some bumfuck clinic when one of Sam's demons came in with a foaming mouth and a nasty gleam in its eyes. Just because the demons wouldn't bite Sam didn't mean that they wouldn't try to take a chunk out of his hide and then apologize, loudly and continually, when Dean died. Of rabies. Fuck no.

Dean usually tries to be kind of understanding about the demons; he doesn't dump holy water on every single one of them (one in ten gets away without a consecrated bath, which is an improvement from one in fifty, no matter what Sam says), no matter how much he wants to. But the foaming demon? Yeah, he'd upended the entire bottle of holy water on it to make it get the fuck out of their room.

He'd had the distinct pleasure of seeing a demon scrabble to get out of a meatpuppet at the same time as trying to make sure said meatpuppet didn't bite their general.

That was an awesome night.

All in all, he's dealing and so's Sam (he's of the opinion that dealing is dealing, even if it somehow involves Sam getting surprise rabies shots in the ass when he's sleeping.)

So he tells his brother to look for a hunt for the first time since he realized the Crossroads Demon wasn't coming for his sorry soul.

That's when the pranks start.

* * *

No matter how much Dean likes to yell at him, it isn't his fault that the demons leave crap all over the motel rooms. Really. He can't control them all the time and they have a habit of doing some pretty weird shit when he's sleeping.

And, okay, it's a little gross to wake up in the morning to cow guts trailing all over Dean and Dean's bed, but. Well, he kind of likes the demons sense of humor and it's the first time in ever that he's actually won a prank war (isn't telling us to stop, guts, guts all over, yum, help you win, sammy, yes).

He spends most mornings laughing himself sick in the bathroom while Dean curses and fumes.

* * *

"Sam," Dean growls at his brother. The son of a bitch chooses that moment to disappear into the bathroom again, giggling like a little girl. Dean's gonna kill him.

His last clean shirt is painted a festive, stinking yellow. The sulfur is ground in far enough that he knows washing isn't going to get it out, and it spells out, in Latin so perfect it would have made Pastor Jim cry, just what he likes to do with goats.

That's just... special.

Glaring at the closed bathroom door and the demons he just knows are swirling between him and their oh-so-precious "general," Dean decides that this? This is war. He reaches over and steals one of Sam's shirts, the one with the dog on it, because it's fugly and he's tried to throw it away at least twice. It'd serve Sam right if it somehow got involved in one of his demon related, "Oops, I'm sure it was an accident, Dean"s.

While he's in Sam's duffel, he takes his own shirt and shakes it hard enough to dislodge what sulfur will come off. He watches it settle in a visible layer over Sam's clean clothes and nods to himself. It's a start. He glances back towards the bathroom and gives the demons milling between them the evil eye, just in case. Fuckers need to keep their mouths shut.

Then he goes out to pick up some coffee for himself and some nice dishwater for Sam.

* * *

Sam's not stupid enough to drink the coffee Dean brings him. The demons whisper warnings anyway (not coffee, dangerous water, don't drink, followed him, don't drink, no), but he doesn't need them. He's not stupid, and he knows his brother.

The clothes, however, were a surprise. Dean manages to get away smelling, if not exactly rosy, than at least clean; Sam's got on a shirt that smells like he's a pyromaniac (sorry, pure sulfur, next time get him with not-pure, rotten eggs, he'll smell like rotten eggs).

Sam boots up his laptop and catches (don't do that, don't drink it, stop, stop, stop) himself reaching for the cup of steaming liquid set so tantalizingly close to his hand. Dean's watching him with a barely disguised look of glee on his face, so Sam purposely picks the cup up and moves it six inches away, far enough that he won't get caught up in researching and reach for it without thinking.

Dean's mouth purses, but he doesn't say anything, just goes back to flipping through his stack of newspapers.

The demons are planning something involving his brother's boots for tonight; Sam masks a smile behind a yawn and tells them to get something neon green and slimy.

* * *

Sam ends up with fleas for about a week, while they're still looking for a job that's easy enough even a brother with shaky control other a few hundred demons won't fuck it up. Dean snickers uncontrollably all week, because it's better than that time with itching powder; Sam can shower all he wants, can do laundry runs until he's panting, but he still has fleas.

He even stops letting the demons come into the motel room at night, not that it helps him now. Dean's so happy he could dance. Only not, because Winchesters do not dance. Ever.

He figures he's won the prank war by default when all Sam can bitch about is the fact that he's got twelve million tiny little bites all over him.

"I told you not to let them sleep with you," Dean says, watching the way Sam's squirming and discreetly scratching at an ankle with his fork, "Maybe next time you'll listen to your elders, eh Sparky?"

Sam's eyes narrow in a way that makes Dean really uncomfortable, but he mentally waves a hand at it and asks his brother if he's got a hunt yet.

Sam stabs viciously at his plate. "There's a haunting in Monterey," he finally mutters, "Fisherman's Wharf. Eight people have almost drowned in the last six weeks and three claim there was a voice calling for them."

"Crazy tourists," Dean tries. Monterey's full of them.

"Yeah, but these are all local people, Dean, shop owners and," here Sam pauses to pull a face and pluck something off his neck, "Boat captains. Not tourists."

Dean watches as Sam uses his fingernails to squish what had to be a flea and smothers a laugh behind his drink. "You sure there's nothing closer? You know, within a hundred miles of here?" Sam gives him a flat look that says, "keep it up and I'll tell the demons how to make you _cry_," so Dean takes a drink of Mountain Dew and tells him, "Alright, Monterey it is. You're bitchy tonight."

Sam ends up getting the last laugh though, because Dean? Dean ends up with fleas for two hell ridden days. Sam looks angelic and harmless, puppy-dog like, when Dean rounds on him, but promises that he'll look into flea shampoo if it'll make Dean feel better.

He gets a nasty suspicion around day two and drops the next flea he picks off himself into a cup full of holy water.

The flea sputters, groans, and bursts into quickly suppressed flames while a couple dozen more decide now's an awesome time to get a Dean snack. Dean whips around to look at Sam, who doesn't look angelic anymore, and, in fact, looks about two seconds away from smiling and three seconds away from getting his lanky ass kicked.

"If I get bit again, I'm putting the next flea I find in the holy water. With the lid on," Dean hisses at his brother, and is gratified to find that one really can feel a hundred fleas leaving their body en mass.

* * *

They get into Monterey a few hours after Dean (bastard, bastard, want him dead, why can't we, please, please) threatens to drown fleas in holy water. Dean's not talking to him right now, which is just as well, because Sam's got a monster of a headache from listening to (tempt, tempt, tempt, watch the pretty girls in the sun, little priest, watch them) the demons babble all day.

One of them chooses that moment to brush out and turn the stereo off (headaches lead to vomiting, lead to death, no death for the general, sammy take care, take care) and another one touches something in his head that makes the most of the pain slip away (arteries and veins and blood, so fragile samuelsamsammy, so fragile).

Dean wrenches the music back up without even looking over. "You do that again and I'm going to shove you out of the freakin' car. Leave. It. On."

Oh, yeah, Sam thinks, they should really be hunting right now. He curls his lip at Dean and tells the demons to behave before his brother decides fratricide is a valid option to continuing on with him (won't happen, sam, sam, sam, we won't let that happen, the brother dies first, entrails and bone and brains to pain the wall and floor).

When that particular image slides through his brain (staring eyes or no eyes, what do you think general, eyes out or in, brains out, bones out, blood out, guts out, eyes out), he has to swallow five or six times to keep from upchucking in the Impala. Dean would never forgive him for that. (Don't you fucking dare,) he thinks, squeezing his eyes shut, (Don't. Touch. Him.)

It's easy to forget that the demons don't like humans. Or, it is for him, because they like him just fine. They hate Dean though, and Sam forgets that; when he's got a demon curled up on the bed with him or making sure he doesn't bump into anything in the middle of the night or taking care of his headaches, he forgets that they want the rest of humanity dead in messy, disturbing ways, starting with his brother and working their way down through everyone he's ever known.

(won't touch) the demons whisper back sullenly, and then slip out the cracks and head off to play.

Agares stays behind to soothe the renewed headache Sam's feeling, but all he wants to do is scratch his skull open and pull out the part that lets the demons talk to him. (won't work, won't work, blood is everywhere, not in your head) Agares says, almost amused, and the silk-sand feeling of a demon in their natural form touches the back of Sam's neck, (better, make the head feel better, make sammy feel better, ignore the brother, we'll ignore).

"Hey," Dean says suddenly, "Quit brooding; we're here." A fist smacks gently into his arm, Dean speak for 'I'm fucking pissed at your pansy ass, but you'd better not keel over on me.' "Welcome to the Days Inn, scenically located nowhere near where we want to go."

"I'll get a room," Sam says. "Stay here."

Dean grumbles and reaches around to fiddle with his duffle bag. Agares hisses out (could be danger, could be hurt, who will watch you). Sam doesn't say anything else.

He's talking to both Dean and Agares, but he's not going to tell either one of them that.

* * *

"Tell me about this case," Dean says the next morning. He'd woken up clean, for once, and he figures that's because he nicked Sam's shirt and sweats to wear to bed. Regardless, he's in a pretty damn good mood.

Sam sulking? Just makes it so much better.

"Eight people claim that they were lured down into the water at Fisherman's Wharf," Sam scratches absently at the back of his head and winces.

He's quiet for long enough that Dean waves a hand at him, just to see if anyone's still home. His brother blinks once, squints in his general direction, and picks up his train of thought like he'd never left it. Demons then. He frickin' hated that. "Most of them think that it's some kind of publicity prank, but a couple of them swear they heard something."

"So, what? Standard haunting? Water spirit? Selkie?" Sam makes some kind of noise and tunes him out again, so Dean twists his mouth and says, "You yelling boo while dressed in a seal skin speedo...?"

"I don't own a speedo, Dean," Sam says, distracted. One hand is up against his head again, pinching the bridge of his nose like he's got a vision coming, and Dean wants to roll his eyes and shout loud enough that his brother freaks the fuck out with a migraine.

Instead, he digs a bottle of some knock-off Advil out of his jacket and hands it over. He's an awesome big brother sometimes, if he does say so himself.

"Quit talking to them if they give you a headache, genius," he says. Sam gives him a bitchy look (he mentally equates to a three year old little brother crying over a brain freeze and scarfing the rest of his ice cream anyway, the idiot) and ignores the pills. Sam never did do what was good for him.

"I'm fine. We're gonna go talk to," Sam checks the laptop again, and that's when Dean realizes that there is something _moving in his hair_. "Erin Langford. She's the only one who didn't skip town afterwards."

Dean hears Sam, vaguely. Mostly, though, he's concentrated on the fact that now that he's looking? He can see a small, hairless pink tail curled sedately against the back of Sam's neck. He slowly reaches out for the nearest blunt object before freezing. There's no way in hell Sam can't feel that... rat-thing, no matter how much of a mess his hair is.

And braining his already headachy brother was probably a good way to get himself killed.

"Sam," he says tightly, and he really doesn't flinch when the tail twitches and a tiny, disgusting head pokes out of the tangled hair, "What the hell is that?"

"Zaebos," Sam mutters, flipping the laptop shut with one hand while reaching up and grabbing the (disgusting, disease-ridden, what the fuck?) mouse off his shoulder, "He's keeping an eye on me, I think. Anyway, let's go talk to Erin."

And his brother picks up his jacket and leaves, mouse still in one hand. Dean stares after him and contemplates just how fucked up his world is.

Sometimes, okay, a lot of the time, he thinks that the demons are seriously fucking with Sam's head about what can and should be considered normal. Letting a mouse climb around in your hair was not normal. Having to talk a shitload of demons out of killing people every chance they got was not normal.

Dean's got feelers out to Bobby and a half a dozen other contacts he's not supposed to know Dad sometimes went to. If he has his way? He'll fucking fix it so that the demons can't screw with his brother's head anymore; until he hears back from them, though, there's no point in making Sam miserable.

Sam's leaning against the Impala, so Dean tucks those thoughts away and grabs the keys. He palms a bottle of holy water on their way out the door. If Sam's not gonna get rid of the fucking _rat_ then he damn well is.

* * *

Erin turns out to be a brown haired girl with blue eyes and a killer smile. She's shy and bookish, giggling nervously when she tells them that she doesn't run Morning Star Pearls, she just works here for the summer, you know?

Dean tells her they're reporters, come to make sure her story gets told straight, and she's so flattered she starts fluttering her hands around and invites them into the backroom.

Sam likes her, and so do the demons. (she'll make pretty babies) they whisper, and one of them sweeps up behind and tilts quizzically, (pretty babies, strong babies, sleeping power in this one, sleeps, sleeps, wakes with you). It's just a vague kind of like on his part, a, "hey, if I hadn't lost my girlfriend two years ago, and I hadn't had to blow the brains out of the last girl I slept with, I'd really make a pass for you," but the demons...

(sleeps with power), Furfur thunders across his skull. (fitting to hold a demon, fitting to be yours, do you want, can we have) the rest of them ask, and Sam's so busy shoving them all down and out of the shop that it takes a minute for Dean's smirk to register.

"What?" he mouths when she turns around to lead them to the backroom.

"She's hot," Dean says back, not even trying for subtle (subtle as a demon, subtle, no, stupid brother). Sam stares at his brother for minute, truly and uncharacteristically horrified at Dean's lack of tact, but Erin's ears turn bright red and she gives Dean a shy smile over her shoulder.

Dean hangs back long enough to mock-whisper, "I'm so totally in, Sammy. Why don't you head back to the motel?" and then he catches up with Erin and pours on the slightly skeezy charm that shouldn't ever work.

Erin laps it up like the bookworm she is.

Sam presses his lips together in irritation; she's not Dean's type and they both know it.

He's just getting Sam back for throwing the dead mouse at him when Dean'd driven Zaebos out earlier, Sam knows. If Dean had asked before he threw the holy water, Sam would have told him that he was pretty sure the mouse was a goner and Zaebos was going to be ditching it as soon as they got to the shop; he'd been pissed to find himself drenched, though, and he'd chucked the dead bit of fluff at Dean's head almost before he knew it.

The Impala had swerved so badly they'd barely missed being a greasy stain on the road and all over an old oak tree. Dean'd leaned over and punched his arm hard enough that Sam could feel a bruise forming on it and then he'd gotten the rest of the holy water dumped over his head while he was still cringing away.

(we'll kill him), the demons had hissed in response, and Sam had said (no) and the car had wrenched back onto the road.

The demons start to inch their way slowly back into the building and Sam tells them (don't bother, i'm leaving now), and goes to see the pier.

* * *

The girl's really too sweet for her own good; she reminds him of a ten year old Sammy, still trying hard to please and wiggling with glee at every little praise. The birth certificate Sam'd pulled up for her said that she was twenty-three, but, yeah, he felt like a pervert flirting with her. Didn't help that she reminded him of his little brother, when he wasn't being a bitch.

As soon as he sees Sam leave out of the corner of his eye, he dials down the flirting. Erin's eyes flash with disappointment a few minutes later, but she answers his questions with a smile that gets steadily more professional.

"Well, no, I didn't know the other victims," she says when he asks, "Not until afterwards. I don't talk to people much," she ducks her head with an embarrassed smile that ramps up her resemblance to Sam something fierce, "But, um, afterwards? We all got together and tried to figure out what happened."

She lifts her head then, chin going up as she meets his eyes. "Everyone else says that what we heard had to be a person, or something, someone on the dock."

"And you don't believe that?" Dean asks, just to keep her talking. Sam's usually better at this sort of thing, but Erin's so damn eager to please that she's opening up like a drunk co-ed.

"No, I heard. I mean," she stops and holds her elbows, biting her lip, "I heard someone say, 'Give it back.' When I was. I almost drowned, you know. I'm a good swimmer; I should have been able to get out of the water, but I couldn't. Something was holding me in, and then when it said, 'give it back,' I could. I could swim again.

"That's not normal, right?"

Actually, that's pretty much standard for restless spirits who want something back instead of wanting revenge, but he's not gonna tell her that.

Erin doesn't have much more to say after that. Dean gently turns down her invitation to maybe go out to dinner sometime and whistles on his way. Sam'll be in the motel, sulking some more and looking up any deaths within the last few weeks, and Dean's feeling magnanimous; he'll stop and pick up lunch on his way there.

Shrimp maybe, or fish and chips.

He's still contemplating the merits of sushi (you don't have to heat it back up and it grosses Sam out) versus fried fish (it's fried and you don't have to heat it back up anyway), when he unlocks his car and climbs in.

His two favorite tapes are fused to the dashboard. The satisfaction of a job gone right and a successfully cockblocked little brother vanishes abruptly, replaced by rage. Sam. Was. _Dead._

* * *

The only thing worse than a homicidal brother was a homicidal brother gunning for your ass.

(did you have to touch his tapes?) he asks the demons, hopelessly, while they drove out to get a good look at the ghost themselves.

Agares radiates confusion from where it's shifting around between his feet and a nameless demon settles itself across his lap and drifts lazily in the current from the open windows (made him mad, made him angry, made him sorry, was good).

Yeah, made him mad. No shit. (mad's okay) Sam tells them, and shifts guiltily when Dean glances over and narrows his eyes. No moving, Dean had said when he got in the car, no talking, no touching, and if you even so much as breathe on my car, so help me God... (homicidal is not).

The demons shrug philosophically in his head and Sam concentrates on not moving so his brother isn't forced to kill him over mullet rock.

Dean grumbles about his tapes all the way to the pier (the water's calm and, if not clear, than no more haunted looking than Sam thinks normal ocean water is) and Sam finally snaps.

"Would you just shut up, Dean? I didn't do anything to your tapes," Sam turns his head, because he's going to shove Dean off the goddamn pier in a minute (good idea, we'll do it, we'll do it, zaebos, flaurus, furfur, agares, will kill the bastard bitch brother, all of us will do it, just ask), and grits his teeth, "Anyway, don't you think we should be focusing on the homicidal ghost? Maybe?"

(ghost is silent, ghost is still) the demons singsong, (salt in the grave, water in the lungs).

Dean gives him a flat look that clearly says no, he doesn't think that's what they should be focusing on ghost just then (stupid brother, stupid, so stupid, why won't he be wise). "What's it gonna do? As long as we stay the hell out of the water, it's pretty damn harmless. I'm the one who's gonna kill you."

There's a sudden flurry of movement that Sam can barely even register and then Dean goes flying through the air. His brother lands in the water with a splash that sounds vaguely ominous and a shadow detaches itself from the building behind Sam. Sam whips his head around, shotgun up and ready, because he's expecting a pissed off ghost.

Flauros hisses something low and venomous down at the water, locked into a human form for once, and then turns black eyes on Sam. (was going to kill you, no, no, nothing hurts the general, he can die, kill him before he kills you, yes, sammysam) it shrieks, digs hard claws into his mind and pulls to try to get its point across, (won't let you die).

Sam's stunned for long enough that Dean's been underwater for at least thirty seconds before he realizes that the demons are holding him under. "Let him up!" he shouts, turns the gun and cocks it at Flauros, "Let him up!"

Flauros blinks slowly at him and tries for innocent (not holding him, the ghost is, little boy with his wishes, holding him, drowning him, he dies now, yes) and doesn't quite get it. Sam doesn't warn him again.

Rocksalt hits some poor homeless man full in the chest. He doesn't care; he cocks it again, looks at Flauros and the inhuman surprise that's crossing its human face, and knows the demon is going to play games until Dean dies. Dean's not even breaking the surface of the water right now and there's no time.

The shotgun is hot when Sam jabs it up under his own chin and squeezes the trigger just enough that the demons can feel what he's going to do. Every single one of the demons, the ones here and the ones suddenly speeding his way from hundreds of miles away, screech (don't, don't, don't, don't) and Dean breaks the surface of the water with a sputtering cough.

Sam keeps eye contact with Flauros until the demon drops its gaze and shuffles away, then he drops the gun and bolts down to Dean. Don't let him have seen that, he thinks fervently, don't let him have seen that, because he's going to freak if he did.

Dean didn't see it. Sam wants to laugh hysterically and thank whatever the hell looks after generals in Hell's army.

"You wanna make sure your pets don't _try to kill me_, Sam?" is the first thing he says, after Sam's hauled him out of the water. He swats angrily at Sam's hands when he tries to help him up and snaps, "You've helped enough for today, dude. Back the fuck off."

He hovers stupidly at his brother's side, runs back to the car and grabs the towels stashed in the trunk while Dean shivers and swears.

"Sorry," he finally offers, and hates how small his voice sounds, "I didn't think that they'd..."

"Shut up, Sam," Dean interrupts, vigorously toweling off his hair, "I smell like a fucking sewer. Just, leave it for right now."

Sam reaches out, takes the sopping towel from Dean and offers him a new one, which he takes. He opens his mouth to try to talk about it anyway, but. "So, yeah, the ghost down there?" Dean changes the subject easily, while Sam's still tilting his head to the side and pushing his eyebrows together, "He's real. Little boy, looks like, and, man, does he like to talk. He only ever says the same thing though."

Dean tosses the next soaked towel on the ground and opens his hand for the one Sam's holding, all without looking at him. Sam feels like he did that time he pissed Dean off so badly he wouldn't look at him for three days.

"He just said 'give it back'," Dean continues, flicks his hands to get water off of them and avoids looking at Sam, "Whatever 'it' is."

Sam looks away from him, feeling guilt eat its way into is belly and wanting to scream. This is the second time his brother's gotten hurt because of the demons. "It?" he finally asks.

The demons have been ominously, blessedly silent for at least five minutes.

They take it upon themselves to respond to Sam's question when all Dean does is shrug his wet shoulders and Sam almost wants to cry. He'd forgotten what it was like to have his head all to himself.

(ghost wants his shell) the demons whisper sullenly, (wants what's his, wants his shell, pretty, pretty shell, stolen from him, yes, wants it back). Sam'll be damned if he wants to accept any help from them right now (was going to kill you, we did what we had to, should have finished it, should have before you stopped us), but he tells Dean what they said.

"You sure that's not just a plot to get rid of me, maybe hide the body later?" Dean sneers.

"Yeah, that's exactly what it is," Sam says. His head hurts and the fucking demons are bitching because he won't let them kill Dean, and, really?, he just wants this goddamn hunt to be over. "Just, come on, man. I'll deal with them later; let's get this done now."

It's pathetically easy after that. Dean scowls the entire time and takes some shots while the demons lead them to a little shell just recently picked off the beach and put out as a trinket in the Harbor House giftshop. It's pretty and stupid and just the thing a child ghost would be too attached to move on without.

The shell burns, but not without ten minutes of Dean cussing at it.

The burning isn't really necessary, he knows, because as soon as the shell's returned somewhere near the water, the demons tell him (ghost child is gone, sent to rest, heaven or hell, should have let it roam, so much pain it would have caused, so much pain it was in, great fun general sammysam). He keeps that to himself though, and let's Dean work out some of his aggression on the shell.

* * *

"Nathan Wilminton was a five year old boy who drowned on a whale watching cruise two months ago," Sam says, softly. "His mom says he was watching the water one minute and not there the next; he was in the water for at least ten minutes before they found him, DOA when he got to the hospital."

He sounds exhausted and Dean would maybe be a little more sympathetic to that if he wasn't freezing cold and aching because of Sam's stupid, misbehaving demons. He's gonna exorcise those sons-of-a-bitches if it's the last thing he ever does.

"So the kid drowned, what, trying to get his hands on a seashell? That's cold."

"Yeah, I guess," Sam clicks through the links on his page and scrubs a hand through the back of his hair, "His poor mother."

"She should have been payin' more attention to her kid and less attention to the whales," Dean says. He feels for the woman, he really does, but, man, if that had been Sam? He would have had a hawk-eye on the kid all the way until they were twenty miles away from the nearest body of water. He can't understand people who don't look after their kids.

"Maybe."

Sam's not angling for the argument Dean's itching for and there's only so long he can yell and bitch by himself. He wants to scream at his brother, because if he can't trust his brother to watch his back from demons and ghosts, then what the hell can he trust?

"Hey, I need to," Sam makes a motion with his hand that Dean privately thinks looks a little bit like a car running off a bridge, "I gotta talk to the demons, man. Why don't you go grab something to eat?"

Are you going to ask them to be a little more discreet next time they try to kill me? Dean wants to ask. He's not quite looking for that much of a fight though, and he knows it, so. "Why don't I go bang Erin?" Dean returns easily instead, and watches the way Sam's mouth presses until it's almost bloodless.

He thinks, for a minute, he's going to get the fight about the girl, at least, but then Sam's face relaxes and he says, "That works too. Get out of here for a while, okay?"

Dammit. "Yeah, no, I think I'll just hang out here tonight. You know, clean the weapons, spend some quality time with my little brother, and hope he doesn't try to kill me, that sort of thing. That alright with you?"

Sam blows out an annoyed breath, mouth turning down in the corners, "Fine, whatever." He closes his eyes and leans back in his bed and that's when everything goes to hell.

The demons start coming in groups of ten or so, slipping in under the door and through the cracks in the floor and the windows because they haven't laid down the salt yet. There's no wind to stir them, but the black ash drifts together and then over towards where Sam's spread out on the bed, and yeah, Dean can see why Sam wanted him gone for this.

He's got a bottle of holy water in one hand and Dad's journal flipped open to an exorcism before he's taken two breaths, and the demons turn as one to flick mocking clouds of black in his direction.

"Stop it," Sam breathes.

The demons stop. And then they start having a whole silent conversation that Dean's not really part of and Dean feels his anger drain away into muted horror. God, he forgets how much he _hates_ it until he sees them all and training takes over; he wants them _gone,_ squashed and sent back to where they came from, courtesy of Dean Winchester.

Instead, he gets to sit here and fiddle with his weapons while his little brother communes with demons.

Dean sighs and rubs at the ache that's coming up between his eyebrows. Man, he should have gone out and gotten a beer.

* * *

It's hard to do this while Dean's hovering and very controllably not freaking out, but Sam does.

The demons are pissed. It's nothing new.

(i told you not to touch him) he tells them as soon as they're all there, the last one straggling in and bitching about how it had to abandon a juicy nun to do so, (leave dean alone and we won't have a problem, fuck him up and i'll fuck me up).

Dean tenses when the demons screech in denial; the demons quiet down immediately and flit (stupid bastard brother, hurts, holy water hurts, don't let) across his mind, because they might like taunting him, but they still hate when he gets them with the holy water.

"Dean's not going t--" he stops, reminds himself that Dean's still there and he needs to think at them instead of talk to them before his brother freaks the fuck out, (dean's not going to kill me, he's my big brother, he'd die for me).

The demons don't trust anything, especially not family members; Meg was the exception, apparently, not the rule. (could threaten you) they whisper, (threats turn to violence, could kill you, kill you while you thought the bastard brother wasn't a threat, he could, could harm you, kill you, we won't allow it)

"Yes," Sam tells them, very firmly, very softly, "Yeah, you will. If he wants to, you'll let him."

The demons all recoil, pull back into themselves and shift around one another before they turn to look at Dean, who's watching all of them with narrowed eyes. (you or him, we choose you, can't make us choose him, we'll kill him for you) they sneer, Agares's voice rising above the rest, (can't choose anyone but you, sammysamuel general, can not).

Sam stares at them, at the roiling mass of demons, and wants to laugh hysterically. "We've already gone through this, haven't we?" he asks out-loud, sitting up, then switches to talking mentally, because Dean's staring suspiciously at him, (he dies, i die, you die. you choose him, or you lose me).

(lose you anyway) the demons howl, (lose you to him if he decides to kill, lose you to you if we kill, what do we do, what do we do).

"What I tell you to." He says it aloud again, because he's not paying as much attention to it as he should be. He's watching Dean.

Dean raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth, but the demons start talking again and Sam can only listen to one of them at a time, and it's not Dean. (tell us to let him kill you) that's Flauros, howling in fury, (can't do that, can't, can't) and Furfur (will not go to hell, will not let you die, can't) adding in his agreement. Sam doesn't care.

(will), he tells them firmly, (you will). "Demon promises are binding. Give me your word. All of yours."

The demons all raise hell across the back of his head and the room reflects that. Things are picked up and tossed, the lights flicker on and off, the air suddenly feels like he's opened a refrigerator. Dean's got a phial of holy water he's splashing at the demons that are halfway manifested, shouting as he pushes his way through them to get to him.

Sam just sits there, hands shoved into his hoodie pocket, and waits.

They can't really do anything, and they know that. One by one, they all whisper (promise not to kill the bastard brother, promise to let the bastard brother kill you). That's not going to be the end of it, because there's a lot that can go on that isn't killing, but the wind dies down after the last gives its word.

Dean not so accidentally spills holy water all over him when he gets near enough and then makes a little "huh" noise when all Sam does is pull a face at him.

"They won't do that again," Sam tells him, flopping back down onto the bed. His head _hurts_ and this time Agares is pissed enough that all it does is whisper (brought it on yourself, told you to take care) instead of helping.

He's got a big brother though, one who's overprotective enough to hand over a pair of pills he keeps in his pocket for things like this. Sam sits up long enough to swallow them dry and murmurs in gratitude. One side of Dean's mouth pulls up in a grimace, but he flicks a finger against Sam's forehead and looks away.

"Yeah, no foolin'," Dean mutters. "What the hell did you just make them promise, Sammy?"

Sam looks away, even though Dean's not looking at him. It's easier to lie. "Nothing important."

"You're nothing important just trashed the motel room, Einstein. Get your shit together; we gotta book before someone comes looking."

(he can kill you) the demons whisper.

He rubs his head and squints at the outline of one demon hovering accusingly above the bed. Dean can't see it, he knows, which is good, because Dean's already muttering to himself about idiotic little brothers and their pets. Somewhere to his left, one of the lesser demons is poking around his duffle, making sure all of his stuff is already put away, because it's got the memory capabilities of a pea.

(guess you'll have to give him a reason not to, huh?) he finally tells it. There's a long, thoughtful silence in his head and Sam throws an arm across his eyes and grins. The headache's already easing.

A wet towel lands on his face. "Stop mooning over your pets and get moving, Sammy."

* * *

Dean's pretty sure he knows what kind of promise the demons made. Sam's emo enough to extract the same promise out of his demons that he got out of Dean; the difference is that the demons? They'll actually have to do it.

So, yeah, he's pretty sure what the promise was. It's in the way the pranks have dropped off and the way they try to give him things he wants, almost bribes. There's a helpful breeze now when he's feeling hot or a whisper of a touch that corrects his aim.

It makes him feel sick to his stomach sometimes, and he wonders if that's how Sam's been feeling all this time, knowing that demons are helping him.

"Stupid fuckers, aren't they?" he asks Sam sometime months later, when the demons seem almost old hat enough to be okay.

Sam tilts his head for a second, face scrunching up into the expression that Dean suspects is supposed to mean, "Dude, what the fuck?", but he actually always sees as, "Daddy says I can't have ice cream for breakfast and candy for lunch, how come?"

Dean nods his head towards where he knows one of the demons is thoughtfully keeping his overheated Metallica tape from spewing its guts out of his tape player and Sam's face smoothes.

Then Sam breaks out into a big, goofy Sammy grin. It still looks the same, still has the power to make Dean feel like he needs to break open his chest and offer his heart up on a platter, even though the little bitch already has most of it. Sam's a little different now, but so is he, and Dean doesn't think it has anything to do with what that Yellow-Eyed bastard taunted him with years ago.

They're just getting older, is all, and everything changes eventually.

"Yeah," Sam says, breaking him out of his (oh, God, those were girly, sentimental thoughts, weren't they?) _manly_ thoughts, "They're pretty dumb."

His brother pushes the heel of one gigantor hand against his temple, code for "the demons are giving me shit right now, be back in a minute," so Dean reaches out and jabs the rewind button on the tape player just to give one of the demons something to do while he waits for Sam to come back.

He taps the steering wheel in time to the opening beat of _Some Kind of Monster_, ignoring the faintly annoyed wisp of demon smoke that curls from the stereo.

So, really? The weirdest thing about it all wasn't that Sam has 100-some odd demons that like to do little things to make Dean's life easier, or the fact that sometimes someone's well-fed pet will show up on the motel's doorstop and spend some quality time cuddling with Sam before its eyes fade back to green or yellow or brown and Sam has to find out where the hell the demon took it from.

It's not even having to avoid the hell out of other hunters or finding out that demons in their natural form like to hang out in the freezer whenever they can and Dean has to wrestle the ice cream from their slick, not-there hands when he wants to have some.

The weirdest thing about it all is the fact that it isn't weird anymore.

Sam laughs suddenly and turns to face him. "They said they're not stupid. They're very, very clever."

"Yeah, sure," Dean scoffs, "Because the only reason I haven't killed you yet is because they keep my tapes from being eaten."

Sam doesn't even pretend to be surprised; Dean doesn't know if it's because he's not, or because he still thinks his brother hasn't figured out what he made his demons promise to let him do. Sammy's never been stupid though, so he hopes it's the latter.

His brother pauses for another second, listening, before he gives a quick smile and says, "Hey, they also get you free beer sometimes."

"Yeah, that's awesome," Dean agrees readily, and Sam laughs again.

He's still gonna get rid of the fuckers. But until then, the free beer's pretty nice.


	2. BatSkellington

_Just a small fic in the same universe as the previous stories that doesn't stand alone._

* * *

They're driving through the lowlands of New Mexico, where the trees are stunted and Sam's the tallest thing around. Dean's not too fond of the desert in summer. It's alright when it's bloomin' and everything, four foot tall flowers and bushes that suddenly come to life, but in the summer where everything's a dusty, half-strangled green, it's not his favorite place to be.

He used to like California for that, with its sunshine babes, but then Sam'd run off and ruined that for him.

They're on their way to, dunno, some place that's _not_ a hundred degrees of precious "dry heat" in the summer, when Sam leans over him and says, "Hey, caves," sort of wistfully, like he talks about puppies and unicorns.

Dean flexes his hands on the steering wheel and tries not to notice how Sam's damn demons are dancing through his fingertips. "Yeah. Caves, Sam. I'm glad you've finally learned how to read."

"I was reading before you were, jackass," Sam says acidly.

That's not really fair, Dean thinks. It wasn't _his_ fault that Dad didn't think to enroll him in school until he was seven and Sammy plopped down next to him and informed him that he was reading Doctor Seuss wrong.

He's pretty sure the demons are laughing at him. "Shut up," he mumbles.

"The demons are very impressed with your intelligence," Sam says, voice choked and smug. Dean takes his eyes off the road long enough to punch his royal bitchiness in the shoulder; not like there are any sudden twists and turns here in the asscrack of nowhere to ruin his baby on.

It's _almost_ worth the displeased screech and the way his fingers go numb, Sam's damn pets wrapping around them and squeezing out all the heat. He flicks them away and they swirl out the open window with a snarl Dean can feel in his bones.

"At least I could count to twenty without using my toes when I was _six_," Dean informs the car. "Little slow on the math, buddy. Always have been."

"Whatever." Sam doesn't think it's even slightly weird that his demons filter back in through the car and settle on his shoulders like a snake or something equally disgusting and creepy-crawly. "Let's go see the caves."

"It's not tourist season, Sammy. Also, there is no way in hell you're getting me into a hole in the ground. The fuck would people voluntarily do that for?"

"Left," Sam says.

Dean automatically takes the left exit.

Towards the damn caves, he realizes a second later. The demons laughing sounds like rubbing Styrofoam together and Sam looks smug in the passenger seat.

"I meant to do that," Dean tells them firmly. "Stop laughing, you bastard."

* * *

Sam manages to get him out of the car and into the sun, but that's about as far as he's willing to go. He's not going into a hole in the ground. He's not going to go trek through a "strenuous hike" in the middle of the day, and he's not going down any path that tells him that weak knees and exhaustion are common. No fucking thanks.

"Wuss," Sam says.

Dean scoffs and raises a hand to shade his eyes. "I'm not goin' into a cave, Sam. Go by yourself."

For a second, Dean's afraid that Sam's going to say something sissy, like "It's only fun if you come with," or start to whine. Then Sam huffs and leans back against the hood of the Impala with a major bitchface going on.

"We're staying to watch the bats, then," he says.

Dean is totally down with bats. Not like they look like rats with wings or anything like that.

Sam's demons fan out across the ground, mostly invisible, if people don't know what to look for, and disappear over the side of the cliff. Good riddance.

"Jackalope," Sam says quietly.

"You're shittin' me," Dean says, just as quietly. He can count on one hand the number of jackalopes they've seen, even hunting through the deserts and the wastelands of America.

Sam tilts his head towards the other side of the parking lot. Dean picks it out after a few seconds, and, yeah, that's totally a jackalope. Smallest one he's ever seen, with tiny horns that aren't even as big as its ridiculously oversized ears yet.

It freezes when demon smoke drifts overhead, checking back in with Sam, and then relaxes when they scatter again. Dean's pretty sure they're spelunking or something. Demons liked dark, closed, freakin' unstable places, right?

Demons. Mayhem. Big hole in the ground that stupid ass people like to climb into. Not a good combination.

"You better make sure those things don't cause a cave in or anything like that," he tells Sam when it occurs to him.

"Already thought of that," Sam says. He squints a little in the setting sun, and Dean rolls his eyes hard when one of the demons obligingly spreads out like Sam's own mini thundercloud to block it out. "They're mostly just annoying the bats right now, though. They like them."

They both lean against the windshield of the Impala and watch the jackalope sniff cautiously at the cactus lining the pavement.

"Our lives are messed up," Sam says thoughtfully.

Dean grunts. "You're messed up," he says. "You're the one with demons who wants to go die in a tiny underground cave."

Sam gives a long suffering sigh that makes the jackalope freeze again, watching them with its tiny bunny nose twitching furiously. "You do know that their Big Room has a ceiling that's over 200 feet tall, right?"

"The only way you're getting me in there is if there's a giant, bloodsucking bat down there killin' people." Dean pauses, thinks about that. "And even then it's mostly the dumbasses faults for going down there in the first place."

The jackalope decides it's had enough of them and turns to hop away with a flick of its white, fluffy tail. One of Sam's demons trails after it lazily, looking like some kind of weird, fast moving smoke, and Dean tells Sam flatly that he better not find a dead jackalope on the backseat of his car.

"It was a present," Sam says helplessly, opening his hands to let a mouse jump into them.

Dean ignores it. Better a mouse than a rattlesnake. "Better not," Dean says direly.

He did _not_ like waking up in the morning to find a dead rat on his backseat, a cat with demon black eyes watching him from the roof of his baby. Nasty ass things.

* * *

The bats turn out to be sort of impressive. They wing out of the caves like clouds of... well, they look like frickin' demons pouring out of hell to him. Dean has a death grip on his bottle of holy water while the demons, the real ones, shoot up to meet the bats.

Then he watches as the bats all shriek as one and frantically turn to fly back into their cave. The demons chase them, gleefully shrieking right back, and Dean does _not_ want to know what they do to the three or four really slow bats they manage to engulf completely.

"Dude," Dean says.

Sam scratches the side of his head and coughs guiltily while all around them people start murmuring about the strange actions of their beloved bats. The bats, meanwhile, continue to scream and dive for cover. The demons giggle like freaky little girls in the back of Dean's skull and catch play catch with one of the slowest bats.

The giggling in the skull thing doesn't really bother him all that much anymore. Sam claims it's some sort of feedback from _him_, since they're biologically related and all, and the longer the demons have hung around, the more he's started to hear.

But them playing with bats? Weird shit.

"Dude," Dean says again. "Seriously?"

One of the bats comes to land in Sam's hair with a gangly, jerking flight that Dean attributes to a demon, since it doesn't immediately keel over dead from touching Royal Boy King. "They, ah, like the bats," Sam says helplessly.

The bat crawls through his hair and Sam flinches, his hands twitching like he wants to squash it.

"Then they should probably stop _eating them_," Dean says. A bat skeleton thunks to the ground right in front of them. Dean's pretty glad it's mostly dark, 'cause otherwise the gawkers would be running instead of just murmuring confused to each other.

"This," Dean says gravely, "Is why we don't get nice vacations, Sammy."

Sam plucks the bat out of his hair and scowls. "Shut up."


End file.
